46
356 FEDERAL SUPPLEMENT, 3d SERIES
A translated copy of the Notice was served
on North Korea on June 19, 2018, see
Return of Service, ECF No. 12, and North
Korea has failed to file an acceptance or
contact Plaintiffs regarding their offer to
arbitrate, Hatch Decl. ¶ 18. The plaintiffs
have thus satisfied the arbitration offer
requirement,
under
28
U.S.C.
§ 1605A(a)(2)(A)(iii). See Hekmati v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 278 F.Supp.3d 145,
158 (D.D.C. 2017) (‘‘[A]n offer of arbitration was included with the documents
served on Iran TTT, which is sufficient to
satisfy the FSIA’s requirement.’’); Moradi
v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 77 F.Supp.3d
57, 66 (D.D.C. 2015) (including an offer of
arbitration in the documents served on the
foreign state satisfied the FSIA’s requirement).
4.
Fourth Element: Actions of North
Korea Qualify for the Terrorism
Exception
Finally, as detailed below, the plaintiffs
have provided ample evidence to establish
the fourth element: that their damages
arise from North Korea’s barbaric mistreatment of Otto, including ‘‘torture,’’
‘‘hostage taking,’’ and ‘‘extrajudicial killing.’’ 28 U.S.C. § 1605A(a)(1).
a.
Torture
‘‘[T]orture,’’ for purposes of the FSIA’s
terrorism exception, is defined by ‘‘the
meaning given’’ to that term in the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991
(‘‘TVPA’’). 28 U.S.C. § 1605A(h)(7). The
TVPA, drawing from the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (‘‘Torture Convention’’), defines torture as follows:
any act, directed against an individual in
the offender’s custody or physical control, by which severe pain or suffering
(other than pain or suffering arising only
from or inherent in, or incidental to,
lawful sanctions), whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on that
individual for such purposes as obtaining
from that individual or a third person
information or a confession, punishing
that individual for an act that individual
or a third person has committed or is
suspected of having committed, intimidating or coercing that individual or a
third person, or for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind.
Pub. L. No. 102-256, § 3(b)(1), 106 Stat.
73, 73 (1992) (codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1350
(note) ); see also Price v. Socialist People’s
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, 294 F.3d 82, 92
(D.C. Cir. 2002) (explaining that the
TVPA’s definition of torture ‘‘borrows extensively from the [Torture Convention]’’).
[15, 16] To establish torture, the plaintiffs must show that the conduct was sufficiently severe and purposeful. See Price,
294 F.3d at 92–93. As the D.C. Circuit has
explained, ‘‘suffering alone is insufficient to
establish a claim under the FSIA’s terrorism exception. To qualify as torture, the
mistreatment must be purposeful—that is,
the defendant must have targeted the victim, for instance, to punish him for his
religious or political beliefs.’’ Kim, 774
F.3d at 1050. Severity ‘‘is crucial to ensuring that the conduct proscribed by the
Convention and the TVPA is sufficiently
extreme and outrageous to warrant the
universal condemnation that the term ‘torture’ both connotes and invokes.’’ Price,
294 F.3d at 92. ‘‘The critical issue is the
degree of pain and suffering that the alleged torturer intended to, and actually
did, inflict upon the victim,’’ and ‘‘[t]he
more intense, lasting, or heinous the agony, the more likely it is to be torture.’’ Id.
at 93. Thus, ‘‘torture does not automatically result whenever individuals in official
custody are subjected even to direct physical assault,’’ as ‘‘[n]ot all police brutality,
not every instance of excessive force used